Norah has completely settled into her school year as a Panda (her class is the Prayerful Pandas). She and her classmates are flying through the letters and numbers and are busy practicing writing and pre-reading skills. Last year, they worked mostly on capital letters, but now they're working on the lowercase ones as well and talking a lot more about how letters are combined together to make words. Outside of school, she decided to take gymnastics this year instead of dance, so she's working on her balance beam and cartwheel skills instead of her shuffle steps. She loves the trampoline, bars, and air track (see below).
In other Norah-news, we finally got her first haircut! As you can see, the change was less than dramatic... but at least we got a much-needed clean-up of the ends.
Maddie continues to find new ways to be curious. She's a forward-facing car-seat rider now and is finding new ways to communicate with us every day. She's still not using a lot of words (though "uh-oh" and "baby" have become early favorites), but she has mastered the art of showing both excitement (usually some combination of point, smile, laugh, scream) and displeasure (vigorous head-shaking, animal-like roar, body rotation [away from sister trying to take toy], throwing of self on floor). She has, after all, spent the last fifteen months watching her sister and learning how to act... so cute (or not so cute, depending on the day!).
Our biggest event of the fall was Maggie and Jake's wedding! Maggie, Jake, and my mom planned a really beautiful weekend and it was so fun to have lots of family members in town to celebrate. Maggie and Jake got married at the parish in which we grew up and went to school - St. Anthony's - and had the reception in the garden at San Joaquin Country Club. Norah got to be a flower girl, a duty which she took very seriously. She had lots of fun playing with all the other kids in attendance (Jake has ten nieces and nephews, and my cousin Julia was here with her boys Liam and Owen). Of course, we've been honored to include Jake as part of our family gatherings for many years, but now it's official. We're really happy for Maggie and Jake as they start their married life together. I didn't take many pictures myself, so I'm borrowing some shots from Laura and Maggie's friend Adam (amazing photographer!) to include below.
Post-wedding, we shifted to Halloween mode. First on the agenda was the pumpkin patch. We have our old favorite patch, which is a u-pick farm on the outskirts of Fresno. Norah remembers all her favorite traditions there (corn maze, hay ride, etc.), and Maddie had fun getting to help pick and cut her own pumpkin this year.
Norah and Dan even carved one of her pumpkins into a jack-o-lantern, a project that apparently grosses Dan out...
Next up was costumes. I usually start on the girls' costumes by mid-September, since a) it takes me forever to figure out how I want everything to work and b) I get interrupted A LOT. This year, though, two and a half weeks would have to do. I ended up having plenty of time (if you count finishing the costumes the morning of Halloween as plenty of time), but luckily Norah chose a pretty easy assignment this year - peacocks for both - or we could have had a major costume disaster!
Norah and Maddie had lots of fun trick-or-treating together. Norah was such a good big sister, taking Maddie by the hand and showing her how to hold out her candy bag. Maddie got the hang of things pretty quickly, and both of them ended up with lots of candy. We did let Maddie have a small taste of a candy bar, then quickly confiscated the rest of her haul for consumption by Mommy and Daddy.
Yesterday, we had the honor of celebrating Veteran's Day with Dan. We took him out for our traditional Veteran's Day lunch, but he also took advantage of some Veteran's Day freebies this year, treating himself to breakfast at IHOP and dessert at the CVS ice cream counter. We're so thankful to Dan and all the others who have served (including our grandfathers and a few uncles and cousins) and continue to keep current service members and their families in our prayers.
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| Dan's first deployment to Iraq... with his friend Blair Nahm |
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| Dan's second deployment to Iraq... with his friend Dennis, commander Col. Mitchell, and an Iraqi General his team was advising |
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| Dan's second deployment... he was part of a small team of advisors to the Iraqi Army |
Finally, since the timeliness of my blog posting has been poor lately, I'm going to go ahead and wish Dan a happy 9th wedding anniversary in advance of the actual day tomorrow. We've made a wonderful life together, and I'm blessed that he promised to be my husband nine years ago. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.
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